


Orphan Blake

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: The crew capture, or perhaps kidnap, or perhaps free, or perhaps shoplift, Servalan's clone from the Clone Masters.
Relationships: Kerr Avon/Fidelma (OCF)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 6
Collections: The House Always Sins





	Orphan Blake

1  
“Naaah, I shouldn’t think they’d do one of you,” Vila said. “You’re not important enough.”

Avon glared, pressed his hands into Orac’s case, and straightened up. 

“There certainly appears to be one of... her...” Avon said. “Although I haven’t been able to find out whether it was an official commission or a personal one, or what the purpose was.”

“Spare parts?” Jenna suggested.

“Or, along that line, kings used to send some of their nobles into battle in kingly armour, in the hope that perhaps they would draw the fire,” Blake said. 

“There’s a lot of tedium in being a politician,” Gan said. “Perhaps Servalan’s the customer herself. She wants someone to send to open bazaars and that sort of thing. All right, Avon, what’s it called?” Gan asked, yawning. It would have been his sleep shift if it weren’t for the full-crew meeting.

“Not ‘it’! Clones are people!” Cally said, and Blake nodded.  
Avon scrolled down the display on the main screen.

“She’s called Fidelma.”

“Just the one name?” Vila asked.

“Her... original? Prototype? Only has the one,” Blake said. He smiled at Cally. “Surnames aren’t required everywhere.” 

“What’s this in aid of?” Jenna said, chewing on a   
stimtab. It would have been her sleep shift as well. 

“The mission is to... obtain... Fidelma from the Clonemasters,” Blake said. 

“Is it safe?” Vila said. “If you brewed yourself a Servalan, you’d best watch your back. And that’s if it’s grateful to you for building it. Although, the monster in the story wasn’t.”

“Well, the mad scientist did build it out of old rubbish,” Gan said. “This is more like making a copy of Servalan.”

“Nothing wrong with most of her parts,” Vila said. “Didn’t people used to make copies of their naughty bits on the office machine at the Federation Heroes Day party? Like that, eh?”

“The Clonemasters maintain clones in stasis until called for,” Avon said, clearing his throat to steer the discussion back on-topic. “And she could be kept in stasis in the shuttle until she could be transferred to the medical unit.”

“Shuttle?” Gan asked. 

“No point in advertising that we have teleport. Particularly when the Federation doesn’t, and you’ll be impersonating a Federation official. You and Cally. You’ve the lowest profile, and Cally should be equal to the task of committing any violence or mayhem that might be required. It really shouldn’t be required, though.”

“So what you’re saying is, we’re going to kidnap a fake Servalan?” Vila asked.

“What a harsh word, Vila. Perhaps, true to the name, we are nobly liberating her to pursue her own destiny. Or, since we’ve already paid for her — well, that’s what the Clonemasters think, electronic payments are nothing but a consensual hallucination anyway — all we’re doing is shoplifting. Or even doing a curbside pickup and saving them the cost and trouble of delivery.”

Jenna shivered. “Buying and selling people! They might as well be Amagons!” 

Cally said, “Setting that aside for a moment, what would we do with her if we had her?”

“It was Blake’s idea,” Avon said, sitting down on the sofa and gesturing to Blake to stand up and address the meeting. “Why talk to the brain, while the hare is in the room?”

“We’re quite near the Clonemasters’ planet,” Blake said. “And we’ve learned a good deal about their operations. This is the perfect time for, ah, for Fidelma to join us.” 

“I wonder what she’ll be like?” Vila held out his hands, palm up, and rocked them up and down like a balance scale. “I mean, is it like a Servalan tree, which is like an apple tree, and they don’t fall far from it and they’re rotten and spoil the barrel? Or does she just start all over again from the begin-ning? Sometimes people say they feel like a whole new man.”

“No, that’s cannibals who are tired of rissoles,” Avon said.

Vila continued, enraptured with his thought. 

“Does the new person get a fresh start? Or do they make the same mistakes you did, or you would? Nature. Nurture. Nurture. Nature. Who’d you be if you were someone else? Or, more like, if someone else was you?”

“That’s very clever,” Avon said. “With more education, you might have taken silk.”

Vila beamed.

“Although the barrister wouldn’t have been best pleased.”

Gan patted Vila’s shoulder sympathetically. 

“Ouch!” Vila said, ungrateful for the solidarity. “But If they built her out of Servalan, won’t she be all rah-rah, kill the rebels? And anyway, I thought the real Servalan is mad to get this ship, why’d we want a fake one here? Wouldn’t she just kill us all and turn round and steam off to the nearest Federation base?” 

“Killing us all wouldn’t be as easy as that,” Jenna said. “And, trust me, I’ve got my work cut out for me managing this ship. This Fiona—”

“Fidelma,” Blake said.

“Hasn’t been to the Federation Space Academy, has she?”

“I’ll take both of those questions, if I may,” Blake said. “I don’t know to what extent a — what would you call it, a protoplasm? Protagonist? Precursor?’s memories and skills are available to a clone. I can’t generalise from my own case, which is an unusual one, because of the mind-wipes. But you see, she isn’t a ‘fake Servalan,’ she’s an autonomous being,” Blake said. “Once set free, she can make her own choices. And I believe that, with proper information, she would opt to help us. Think of what an inestimable intelligence asset she could be.”

“You know,” Gan said, “I did one dreadful thing in my entire life, and although there was a reason for it, still and all I regret it every day of my life. I’d give a lot to have a second chance. Perhaps Fi-delma can make up for at least a few of the things Servalan has done. If we explain it properly, I daresay she’d see it that way too.“

2  
Cally picked out a splendid uniform for Gan, forest-green broadcloth with huge epaulets like gold hairbrushes and a bronze Sam Browne belt. For herself she chose a simple brown suit, with a calf-length skirt and a peplum jacket, suitable for her deferential role of carrying the briefcase full of paperwork. 

The guys at the loading ramp chez Clonemasters obediently signed all the documents on Cally’s clipboard and gave Gan a few screens and a stylus to scrawl something indecipherable. 

Cally let Gan pilot the shuttle back to the Liberator, although she did give a few GPS-like shrieks in time to stave off potential problems. 

When they arrived, they brought the stasis capsule to the flight deck, where Jenna and Blake were on watch. 

“Welcome!” Blake said, with his most reassuring rumble. “I’m Roj Blake, of course...”

Fidelma yawned. 

“Who?” 

All right then, Blake thought. We didn’t think they shared their memories completely. Perhaps she and I have something in common. Although, I don’t suppose Fidelma has any memories, just an implanted skillset. She didn’t have memories of an independent life, only to have them violently stripped away. 

“This is the Liberator,” Blake continued, undaunted. “We are rebels, and we hope you can be per-suaded to adopt our cause.” 

Fidelma plunked herself down on the flight deck sofa. The hospital gown she wore had some kind of design in blue, rendered unidentifiable by frequent washing. Blake averted his eyes when she propped her feet up, because that was all she was wearing.

“The outfit the blonde girl is wearing isn’t too bad,” she said. “Get me one like it, that’ll do. But better than the one that skinny spinster schoolmarm has on.” 

Gan cleared his throat. 

“Would you like something to eat? I’m a bit peckish myself, after the trip.”

Fidelma nodded. 

“Large Gin and It, ice and slice. Some crisps and salted almonds. Warm; they’re no good cold, of course.”

Jenna didn’t think it was the best idea to give Fidelma the run of the ship, so she went to the Wardrobe Room and fetched her a midnight-blue panne velvet shift dress that was ample enough to obviate fitting problems, a pair of ballooning pants, a chemise, and a pair of sandals. 

3  
It was soon evident that, just as in pre-Aslan Narnia, it was always winter and never Christmas, and it was always Fidelma’s birthday, yet she never copped to getting any older. For her to see something she liked was for her to imperiously demand it as tribute or, if it was not forthcoming, to simply seize it. Vila thought that while he had never been averse to picking pockets, he at least had the grace to do it surreptitiously. And he wouldn’t denigrate the quality of the victim’s small leather goods or sneer that it was last year’s model. 

On the subject of picking pockets, Vila was supposed to shadow Fidelma, or perhaps the other way around, and give her the Delta-in-the-Dome’s perspective, but that was dead boring so he taught her to pick locks. He thought she had more natural aptitude for it than Avon, although she hadn’t had the time to practise that he had. 

They would have been bezzie mates, if Fidelma hadn’t interrupted one of Vila’s tales of high life in juvenile detention by saying, 

“You got arrested a lot, didn’t you? I like people who didn’t get captured.”

4  
Blake sat down on the sofa, and pushed the tray toward Fidelma. Cream, two sugars, just the way she liked it. 

“We’re all out of teacakes,” he said apologetically. 

“Have some Garibaldi biscuits instead.” 

She wrinkled her nose but ate the biscuits. 

“I asked that nasty little box about you,” she said. Blake had to admit the justice of the characteri-sation. “You were the leader of the Freedom Party.”

“That’s right!” he said, leaning forward, hands dangling between his spread knees, preparing a top-line version of his political philosophy.

“Well, that’s until you got them all killed,” she said, finishing off the last biscuit on the plate. “The guilt must be awful, being the last one to survive.” 

Yes, that would be the one time she’d show sympathy for anyone other than herself, Blake thought. She certainly didn’t feel empathy for the last biscuit standing. 

“I don’t think that’s an entirely fair characterisation,” Blake said. “Although it’s understandable, it’s so difficult for anyone to get real information rather than Federation propaganda.”

“I expect that’s why they haven’t caught you yet. Letting you run free, you can just keep getting your people killed and save the taxpayers’ money.” 

“Perhaps her troops are as useless as you seem to think my crew is.” 

Blake was beginning to suspect that Fidelma was half of the Natural Woman — nasty and brutish, although of middle height, and certainly not solitary because that would leave her with nobody to fetch and carry and nobody to insult. 

5  
Gan finished the post-flight checks on the shuttle and entered the data into the flight control system. 

“I feel a bit like a scientist,” he told Blake. “Observing an experiment. Seeing what someone would be like, not being raised in a family — not being raised at all, really. I mean, Cally didn’t have our sort of family, but I do miss mine and I wouldn’t be without them for the world. One way that the Federation keeps people down is threatening their family. So is Fidelma better off because they can’t hold that over her head, or worse off because she never had it?”

6   
There was an obvious move to attract her loyalty. Not only didn’t Blake want to order Avon to se-duce Fidelma, he didn’t think that Avon would obey. But it would also be unproductively obvious to order him not to seduce her, so he made a knight’s move of not saying anything at all and waited for the inevitable.

7  
“I confess that I’m not sure why, if we need Fidelma at all, it would be now,” Cally said to Gan. “She is... difficult.” Cally was about to say that it was a pity they had all fallen in line with Gan’s plea when she realized she was talking to Gan. 

The day before, Cally had invited Fidelma into her cabin for a chat. Fidelma reached into the basket where Cally had not got around to putting away the clean laundry. She pulled out Cally’s favorite tunic, and crumpled it into a ball. 

“I’ll have that one.”

“No, you see, Fidelma, this isn’t the wardrobe room, this is my laundry.” She gave a ghastly laugh that would have got her fired from a weekly rep Noel Coward production. “I should have put it away, silly of me. Now, although Blake is not a strict Marxian — we’ll discuss that in a moment — even regimes where the State controls the means of production for the benefit of the People, per-sonal property has not been outlawed.” 

“I do not have a ‘fat arse’ to stretch out your rotten tunic,” Fidelma said. “And I’m going to tell Blake what you almost-said!” 

8  
“And you’re from some awful place at the back of beyond,” Fidelma said. 

“Demeter, yes,” Gan said. “But it’s not awful at all, it’s a very pleasant Agricultural World; you would love it there just before Harvest Meet, all golds and purples and scarlets. Trouble is that the Fed-eration takes all the crops, and won’t let Demeter develop the industries that would allow it to be-come really prosperous, and not at the mercy of a bad season or a low allocation from Star One.”

“I really don’t know what you’re doing here,” Fidelma said.

“I was sentenced to Cygnus Alpha, you see, but Blake came along and rescued Vila and me.”

“Just the two of you?”

“Blake would have taken along more of the prisoners, goodness knows there’s plenty of room here, but they wouldn’t be budged. It’s sad, really, folk will stick to what they know no matter how dreadful it is.”

“They must have been thinking about what happened to his last lot of rebels. No, I mean I wonder why he keeps you around. After all, Avon is a genius; Blake managed to sell snake oil to a whole movement; Jenna is an exceptional pilot; Vila can open any sort of lock or safe; and even that collie girl is good at passing herself off as a normal human. But you, you’re just... sort of here.”

9  
“It’s open,” Fidelma said. 

Avon reminded himself that ‘I’ll bet it is’ was a rejoinder unworthy of him. He also felt that, as a modern man, he should not have been so excited by Fidelma’s virginity. He relished the challenge of initiating her into the world — the galaxy — of sensual indulgence. Yes, that would be, ahem, a hard act to follow for the rest of the men in her life, but after all, that was their look-out. 

He held up the ice bucket from which the neck of a champagne bottle protruded.   
“I don’t know if you like champagne or not. So this is rather in the nature of a brut force attack.” He didn’t like champagne very much, so he thought he would probably be able to drink little enough to keep his wits about him. Then, unsure how far her programming extended, he said, “It’s an alcoholic beverage. Rather like the wine you had at dinner last night.”

He sat down on the floor, next to the bed, and started undoing the buckles on her sandal. Her foot was entirely pristine. Of course, he thought. She’s barely ever walked, much less worn shoes. He felt his heart squeeze. She’s never done anything, he thought. Nothing at all. It made him think that, although he disliked them at the time, he had had a series of marvelous adventures. He had been given, or rather submerged in, a chance to live life at the fullest. He bent his head and pressed his lips to the arch of her foot, brimming with sorrow for her. 

Fidelma undid the knot at her neck, which secured the sort of halter or pareo-thing confected from Jenna’s bedspread. She whisked it off, threw it toward the corner, and bounced back down to the mattress. 

“My cunt’s up here!” she said cheerfully.

“All right, all right, give me a moment,” Avon said, unhanding her foot, as it were. “This is a French-cuff shirt.” 

10  
“It’s one thing for her to have her eye on the main chance and devil take the hindmost,” Vila said. “I rather like that in a girl. But I don’t see why she has to be so horrible all the time. She could at least put on an act, you know? At least the real Servalan’s Supreme Commander; nobody was fool enough to make Fidelma anything.”

“Perhaps that’s why so many of Blake’s projects involve wanton destruction,” Avon said. “There isn’t the problem of what to do with them afterwards.”

11  
“I wonder if the Limiter would keep me from taking a swing at that, at that... such-and-such?” Gan asked. “Honestly, I think it would be worth the agony just to try it and see.”

“As we’ve often discussed lately, Gan, clones are just ordinary people,” Cally said. “No one can help how they were born, in the most primitive biological as well as other senses. Still and all,” she said bravely, “you can hit me if you like. Go ahead.”

Gan shook his head. 

“I’ve no reason the world to hurt you,” he said. “Unlike her.”

12  
Avon concluded that, in the ancient Earth language of S-Pannel, ‘Don Juan’ meant ‘unregulated public utility’.

13   
At her flight deck position, Jenna felt the minute change in the ship’s vibrations even before she saw the indicator light. She pelted over to Blake’s cabin to wake him up. She waited impatiently as Blake crammed a pair of trousers over his pajamas and stuffed his sockless feet into a pair of boots. 

One of the shuttle bay doors gaped open over an empty launch tube. Blake slammed the door. There was a piece of graph paper, folded in thirds, taped to it. Blake nerved himself to open the note, his heart thudding in his throat.   
“I thought that you’d want what I want,” he said. 

“Sorry, my dear.” Then he actually read it, said, “Oh, hell!” because the note said, in tiny capital letters written in black ultra-fine-point marker, “She’s nothing but trouble here. I’m dropping her off with Rashel and your counterpart and Imipak, they should be safe enough. I didn’t give her a bracelet. She didn’t take one. I counted. Back by teatime.” 

When Avon returned, alone, Blake said nothing but ‘Scots verdict’, which of course is ‘Not guilty, but don’t do it again’.

14  
After completing a minute adjustment to the course, Jenna leaned back and took a drag on a ciga-rette from the last pack that Fidelma had not managed to locate. At least plates with cigarette butts stubbed out in half-eaten fried eggs no longer turned up in the oddest places. 

“Awfully quiet. It seems a bit empty, somehow,” Vila said, drumming his fingers on the console. “Where are the clones? There ought to be clones.”

Jenna shrugged, wondering whether it was annoying enough to threaten to mutilate him if he didn’t stop. 

“Well, maybe next year.”

**Author's Note:**

> A result not entirely unlike "The Yoko Factor" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.


End file.
